LETTER: Stop worrying about automation and get a job

Why should we as a society worry about low-income retail cashiers and fast-food workers whose jobs are being taken over by automation technology?

When you lose a job, the most logical thing to do would be to get another one. I had to whenever I became unemployed. The people who work these positions should take responsibility for their lives and adapt to the changes by either getting a different and preferably higher-paying job, or by going back to school to learn new skills to get such a job.

And I'm sure there are many of them these days who are doing just that by enrolling in technical schools and community colleges. (And oh, Gov. Phil Murphy, we already have free community college education here in New Jersey by way of federal Pell Grants, which qualifying students do not have to pay back, in case you haven't known.)

CLOSE

A look at how robots are taking over more and more of the tasks traditionally done by humans.

Some social activists are using this issue to promote universal basic income, where our government, as it's done in many European countries, would pay its citizens a certain amount of money each month, no questions asked. My only problem with this absurd idea is that the money would come from working taxpayers such as myself, not just those “criminal” rich capitalists they complain about, and that people receiving it would devoid themselves of the responsibility of working and paying their own way in life and try to live on that basic income entirely. When they realize that the amount they get each month is not enough to live on, they would organize and march on Washington, demanding cost-of-living increases.

I for one am not buying it. When factory towns such as our own Bridgeton and Millville lost their glass factories, they survived and their former employees moved on to other employment. If people can do that, then we as a country will surely survive this automation problem.